Gail Hareven - Lies, First Person

“In short,” he said after shifting here and there, “it’s a bad, shallow book out to create a sensation, but there’s no German porno in it. And if I hadn’t known it was written by a pervert, I never would’ve guessed.”

“Yes, I understand.” Sleep was already taking over me completely, and I still had to put Yachin down in his crib and lead myself to our bed. How was I going to drag myself there?

Aware of my situation at last, Oded stood up and pulled me to my feet.

“All I can tell you is that if I imagined that the book would help me understand something, I was wrong; I don’t understand anything about that man.” I should have asked him who he meant by “that man,” but I was overcome by a fit of yawning and the pressing need to surrender to the tide of sleep and sink into the depths. Which is what I did. I allowed my husband, purified and clarified, to lead me to the bedroom. He put Yachin to bed and joined me. And enveloped by the clean white smell of the salt of the earth I slept dreamlessly till morning, and in the morning we spoke no more about the book.

Hitler, First Person was not translated into Hebrew in the end and it soon disappeared from the shelves of the bookshops. And nevertheless, it happened that people who knew my maiden name asked me if I had any connection to Gotthilf, the historian or author: hadn’t there been some kind of scandal? Remind me, what was it exactly?

Years before the appearance of the pigtail-sucking Alice, I already knew that a partial truth was more acceptable than a lie, and I always answered: “I think he may be related somehow to my father, but I’m not really sure”—and changed the subject.

The book disappeared from the shelves in the bookshops, but not from the bookcase in which Oded had buried it in his office, and from which it came back to attack me six years later, after it had already faded from my mind.

This happened during the Passover holidays. Yachin was then almost seven and Nimrod had already turned five. We were in Spain. Chemi had decided that the family needed and deserved a vacation, and to the delight of all concerned he chose to take us to a charming hotel on top of a hill overlooking the Costa del Sol.

The weather was pleasant, Oded spent hours with the boys in the pool, Yachin was already able to hold himself above water with an energetic dog-paddle, and I, who don’t know how to swim, spent the days reading, wandering around the village, and dozing in the mild warmth of the sun.

I was just a little drowsy when Menachem appeared in shorts and a shirt, set a chair beside my sunbed, looked down at my exposed face, and asked me the question about your-connection-to-the-historian-Gotthilf.

“To my regret, he’s apparently some kind of cousin of my father’s,” the sun gave me an excuse to cover my eyes. “Sorry, one more relation I have no cause to be proud of.”

My reply did not stop him, and he went on to ask me what I could tell him about the man.

“Hardly anything, in fact. I know that his mother got him out of Vienna at the same time as my grandmother escaped with my father, but my grandmother came to Palestine while they, I think, emigrated to England. What was his mother’s name? Hannah, I think.”

He was more experienced than I was in conducting interrogations, or perhaps he didn’t mean to interrogate, but simply fastened his teeth on a subject he found of interest.

“And all those years you didn’t have any contact with him? That’s quite unusual, especially with people who suffered the common trauma of being refugees. None of the other members of the family, I understand, survived.”

“I think he visited Israel once,” I sank further into the artificial darkness of my arm. “I don’t remember exactly. Maybe there was something like that. I think there was. Perhaps it was when I was already in boarding school.”

“Interesting,” he observed. The sounds of splashing and warning cries together with mild rebukes from my husband rose from the direction of the pool. “Interesting,” his father repeated and put something down next to my thigh. “In any case, I’m curious to know what you have to say about this. I found it in my library in the office.”

Menachem had the old-fashioned habit of wrapping the books he was reading in paper, so as not to stain them with his fingers — he had a collection of bookmarks too — and so, when he set the book down next to me and I finally opened my eyes, even though I should have realized at once what it was — for a moment I failed to do so.

“You’re the expert on literature in our family, so take a look and let’s hear your verdict.”

With my face to the sun going down over the sea beneath us, I picked up Hitler, First Person and opened it.

“You want me to read it now?”

“Why not? At least have a look for a few minutes. As far as I can see you’re not reading anything else at the moment. I’d like to hear what you think.”

I could have told him that I didn’t want to read about Hitler. I could have claimed that the book wasn’t suitable for holiday reading and that he hadn’t brought us to the pampering sunshine only to thrust us into the darkness with Hitler. I could have said all kinds of things to get out of it, the only problem was that I couldn’t. Anyone who has once dwelled in the Garden of Eden will forever fear being cast out. And among the inhabitants of the rose-tinted heavens there must be more than a few fearful souls of those who, even in their previous lives were braver than me. Anyone who has tasted the honey of the leviathan and the milk of the pomegranates, will be terrified at the mere thought of exile. And only because of the fear of the flaming sword turning every which way, only because of my cowardice and my dread of the turning flame, only because of this and for no other reason I went on holding the book in my hands, and saw myself as compelled to read it.

•

Menachem went on sitting beside me, paging through a magazine, and appeared to be waiting for me to present him with a speedy report, and I stood up and raised the back of my sunbed. As I stood there I saw Oded coming out of the water, and carrying Nimrod quickly toward the showers. Yachin ran after them, and nobody came to me with a question or a complaint or a request for a kiss on a place that hurt.

The painted clay pots of plants hanging over the bar gleamed in the sunlight: the ladybugs painted on them, red against the yellow, were as big as the painted flowers. A pair of hotel employees walked past behind us chatting in musical Spanish: the tone of their voices was enough to tell me that that they’d finished work for the day and were on their way home. A third worker slowly and patiently unrolled a green net over the blue of the pool.

Chemi’s imperial, bald head shone. He pored over his magazine with his lips closed, and in profile he looked like a statue of a man poring over a document. Menachem is the only person I know whose lips are never parted: neither parted, nor pursed. One lip rests on the other in perfect, unquestionable order. Once he had instructed me to read, he turned to his affairs, taking it for granted that I would do what was expected of me.

I learned to read at the age of four, and I read as easily as breathing. I have a BA in literature; in my prehistory I managed to write seminar papers with half a bottle of alcohol in my belly. I told myself that there was no reason I would not be able to read these pages that didn’t belong to this place, or to me, or to Hitler, this text that didn’t touch anyone or anything, and that I certainly would not allow it to do so.

I put on my blouse and skirt, again picked up the book wrapped in brown paper, and sat down to do as I was told.

The text opened with a boastful sentence. The narrator bragged that he had looked into depths where no one before him had dared to look. From there he launched into a description of a vision he’d had: an apocalyptic scene in the style of a science-fiction comic, or a description of killing fields in the World War I.